Field of Invention
This non-provisional United States patent application is directed generally to laser produced plasma (LPP) extreme ultraviolet (EUV) systems and more particularly to systems and methods for controlling EUV energy generation.
Description of Related Art
The semiconductor industry continues to develop lithographic technologies which are able to print ever-smaller integrated circuit dimensions. Extreme ultraviolet (“EUV”) light (also sometimes referred to as soft x-rays) is generally defined to be electromagnetic radiation having wavelengths of between 10 and 120 nanometers (nm) with shorter wavelengths expected to be used in the future. EUV lithography is currently generally considered to include EUV light at wavelengths in the range of 10-14 nm, and is used to produce extremely small features, for example, sub-32 nm features, in substrates such as silicon wafers. To be commercially useful, it is desirable that these systems be highly reliable and provide cost effective throughput and reasonable process latitude.
Methods to produce EUV light include, but are not necessarily limited to, converting a material into a plasma state that has one or more elements, e.g., xenon, lithium, tin, indium, antimony, tellurium, aluminum, etc., with one or more emission line(s) in the EUV range. In one such method, often termed laser produced plasma (“LPP”), the required plasma can be produced by irradiating a target material, such as a droplet, stream or cluster of material having the desired line-emitting element, with a laser beam at an irradiation site. The line-emitting element may be in pure form or alloy form, for example, an alloy that is a liquid at desired temperatures, or may be mixed or dispersed with another material such as a liquid.
In some prior art LPP systems, droplets in a droplet stream are irradiated by a separate laser pulse to form a plasma from each droplet. Alternatively, some prior art systems have been disclosed in which each droplet is sequentially illuminated by more than one light pulse. In some cases, each droplet may be exposed to a so-called “pre-pulse” to heat, expand, gasify, vaporize, and/or ionize the target material and/or generate a weak plasma, followed by a so-called “main pulse” to generate a strong plasma and convert most or all of the pre-pulse affected material into plasma and thereby produce an EUV light emission. It will be appreciated that more than one pre-pulse may be used and more than one main pulse may be used, and that the functions of the pre-pulse and main pulse may overlap to some extent.
Since EUV output power in an LPP system generally scales with the drive laser power that irradiates the target material, in some cases it may also be considered desirable to employ an arrangement including a relatively low-power oscillator, or “seed laser,” and one or more amplifiers to amplify the pulses from the seed laser. The use of a large amplifier allows for the use of a low power, stable seed laser while still providing the relatively high power pulses used in the LPP process.
Systems currently known and used in the art typically set a fixed pulse width for the main pulse that is expected to produce the greatest amount of EUV energy under ideal conditions. In these systems, an oscillation in the amount of EUV energy generated is observed. Current techniques used to reduce the oscillation involve varying the pulse width and/or by modulating the timing of the laser pulses.